Ted NeedlemanCougar Mountain Denali SummitCougar Mountain Denali Summit is a user-friendly system that offers a wide variety of modules and options. While a little generic in terms of capabilities it should meet the needs of many SMBs that don't require advanced capabilities.

Easy navigation. Two of the three bundles include Crystal Reports. Available as a single purchase or per-month payments. Can be purchased directly or through a reseller channel. Fund Accounting edition available.

Cons

Crystal Reports costs $495 extra, even for the most basic bundle. Report filters and data entry screens are not particularly intuitive. Not much charting or graphics capability within most modules.

Bottom Line

Cougar Mountain Denali Summit is a user-friendly system that offers a wide variety of modules and options. While a little generic in terms of capabilities it should meet the needs of many SMBs that don't require advanced capabilities.

Founded in 1982, Cougar Mountain Software (CMS) has been around since the early days of PC-based accounting software. Initially, the company concentrated on point-of-sale (POS) and the back-end accounting applications that support it. Over the years, the retail software end has been bolstered by versions and modules that target other segments and verticals. For this review, I looked at a top-end version of Cougar Mountain Denali Summit that's sold directly by CMS or through its dealer channel (with a base price of $275 per month for the first user and another $65 per month for each additional user). That's a decent price for a mature system that will satisfy many midsize business accounting needs, and can even act as a basic enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, though it falls down enough on the reporting side to stay just behind Editors' Choice winners NetSuite OneWorld on the ERP side and Intacct on the accounting side.

When we reviewed Cougar Mountain Denali Summit as an enterprise accounting system, we rated the software as "Excellent." Unfortunately, because it's somewhat feature-limited as an ERP platform, it doesn't retain that rating when we look at it through that lens. Still, we rate it as "Good" with a 3.5 rating. So, if your needs are primarily in the area of financial accounting (with ERP functionality being of less important), then Cougar Mountain Denali Summit may be just what you're seeking.

We also tested Cougar Mountain Denali Summit's Inventory Management module, which is a fairly easy to use system that features process flow chart menus and other modern capabilities. It should meet the needs of many small to midsize businesses (SMBs) but its dearth of charting and graphic capabilities as well as an older, less intuitive user interface (UI) had us rating it a 3 in this category, meaning it's a good value but well behind our Editors' Choice in the Inventory Management category, namely Acumatica.

Cougar Mountain Denali Summit is also available in a version intended specifically for retail operations with POS requirements. All bundles are available for on-premises installation on your own server or you can opt to have Cougar Mountain Denali Summit privately hosted, either via a cloud provider of your choosing or by CMS on an AppEazy Applianz server from Applianz Technologies.

Moving Through the System

You can access Cougar Mountain Denali Summit through the CMS Controller. When you click the Controller icon, you're brought to the Controller screen where all company, chart of accounts, and user setup is performed. Navigation is done via several methods. The installed modules are shown as labeled icons along a ribbon bar at the top of the screen. Also on this bar are icons for the Financial and Sales dashboards as well as the Help function. The Financial and Sales dashboards give you a summary of company data in those two areas with appropriate charts. The charts aren't fancy but both dashboards let you choose what to display.

A nice feature on the Financial dashboard is a table that shows various ratios and summary data for Liquidity, Coverage, Leverage, Operating (such as Return on Assets or ROA), and Cash Flow. Of course, you can allow or block access to this information in the Controller module to specific users based on their assigned role. Like AccountMate, however, the charting and graphing capabilities in most Cougar Mountain Denali Summit models are sparse as compared to more robust competitors such as Editors' Choice winner Intacct or NetSuite OneWorld. You can export data into Microsoft Excel fairly easily and rely on that software for graphic data renderings. However, it would be more convenient and competitive to have those capabilities included in Cougar Mountain Denali Summit.

As you change from the Controller to another module such as General Ledger, Denali Summit loads the appropriate module (which is evident because the center window and other panes change, adding the features appropriate to the new module). For example, the Controller's main display has icons for tasks such as setting up the company, adding or deleting users, defining currencies (if you are using the multi-currency features), and defining global system settings. The ledger's main panel offers tasks such as Allocations, Budgeting, Journal Entries, and Recurring Entries. The chart of accounts is flexible, and you can define up to six segments, with a total of 50 characters.

Above the Icon bar, there's a second ribbon bar to perform operations such as generating reports and perform period-end and year-end closings. A third navigation pane is located vertically on the left-hand side of the screen. This one lists task groups on the bottom part of the panel; clicking one of these groups brings up the available tasks for that particular group of functions in the top part of the panel. All of these make it fairly easy to find what you want to do and get to that function. There's a comprehensive Help function if you get lost or are unsure about how to perform an operation.

Aside from limited capability when it comes to natively graphing data, there also aren't a lot of predefined reports in the General Ledger module. You'll find the standard financial statements and, on the plus side, you can print those out in comparative format. Denali Summit also has a budgeting capability and there are several budget reports. To build your own, however, isn't as easy as it is with some other packages. The report and data entry filters are not particularly intuitive, though once you've used them a few times, they aren't intimidating. Two of the three module bundles include Crystal Reports so, once you learn how to use that (or pay a Reseller to help you), it's not difficult to generate ad hoc or custom reports, albeit again in a third-party app rather than the native Cougar Mountain Denali Summit platform. SAP Business One Professional follows a similar strategy, but then again, SAP owns Crystal Reports so perhaps it's not the same thing. The Cougar Mountain Denali Summit base package bundle doesn't include Crystal Reports but you can purchase it on your own from SAP, beginning at $495.

The Same, Only Smaller

The version of Cougar Mountain Denali Summit that I reviewed, which was hosted on an Applianz Technologies server, supports remote access using the Chrome browser. There's a link supplied on Applianz's download page for an app aimed at Android devices and another app in the App Store for iOS. At the moment, the Android link doesn't actually work—but this is a problem with the Applianz server software, not with Cougar Mountain Denali Summit. I had no problem accessing Cougar Mountain Denali Summit from my iPad by using the app from the Apple App Store. Access from Windows is done by using a downloaded AppEasy Connect program, which worked fine and looked the same from my Core i7 desktop and a Microsoft Surface Windows 10 tablet.

There was no difference in any of the three logins (Desktop, iPad, and Microsoft Surface); they all took me to the virtual machine (VM) the app was using. I launched the software by clicking the CMS Controller (i.e., system manager) icon and all of the logins brought me to the same screen. With Cougar Mountain Denali Summit, as with almost all of the apps I reviewed (except Acumatica), the mobile apps aren't really optimized for a smaller screen. This means using the app on a smartphone or smaller tablet requires you to drag the screen around to get to the area you need. I also used a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard with the iPad and Yoga tablets, and found it much easier to work with that keyboard than with the on-screen keyboards on these devices.

One-Time or Per-Month Pricing

Cougar Mountain Denali Summit is available on a pay-as-you-go monthly basis or as a flat-fee purchase. The low-end Denali Basecamp bundle is priced at $85 per month for a single user, with additional users costing $40 per month each and eight hours of support or training (which adds $65 per month). The bundle, which includes the Controller, Bank Reconciliation, General Ledger, and Accounts Payable (AP) and Receivable, can be purchased for a one-time fee of $1,999 with support and training additional, as are additional user licenses. The Denali Ascent bundle, which adds Inventory, Order Entry, SAP Crystal Reports and two hours of support and two hours of training, costs $2,999 or $190 per month. Finally, the Denali Summit package (which I reviewed) provides purchase orders (POs), Payroll, and multiple-location Inventory, and is priced at $4,999 for a single user or $275 per month, which also includes two hours of support and two hours of training.

The Inventory module I tested is part of the Cougar Mountain Denali Summit bundle, which also includes the system manager (what CMS calls the Controller), General Ledger, AP and Receivable, Sales and PO entry, and Bank Reconciliation. Pricing begins at $4,999 or $165 per month. The bundle also included SAP Crystal Reports, which is an extra $495 with a more basic bundle. You can opt for additional modules, including POS. The system I reviewed was deployed as a hosted instance on an Applianz server, which is one deployment option (the other being an on-premises installation).

In this set of reviews, I used apps such as NetSuite, which has completely transparent integration. I also used modular apps such as Sage 300c, which consist of several individual modules that share a common database. Both approaches work fine, and even a completely integrated suite generally has extensions developed by third-party providers (which should be completely transparent to the user). The modular approach taken by CMS isn't better or worse; it just keeps its modules more separate. This approach lets you create a fairly custom system, though you can achieve the same thing with most of the other apps reviewed here as well.

ERP If You Don't Need Too Much

My definition of what constitutes an ERP platform really depends on several factors, but the key factor is exactly what constitutes an "enterprise." For these reviews, we've defined an "enterprise" as a business with needs too complex for a standard online accounting app. CMS doesn't actually label its Cougar Mountain Denali Summit suite as ERP but, if we apply that definition, then it's suitable for smaller enterprises that just need basic ERP functionality.

If more advanced ERP features are what you need, then the suites from Epicor and NetSuite OneWorld are what you should be looking at; Cougar Mountain Denali Summit doesn't compete with them at that level. However, if entry-level ERP is your focus, particularly for retail operations, then Cougar Mountain Denali Summit could be just right for you.

We tested Cougar Mountain Denali Summit with its POS module installed. (Cougar Mountain Denali Summit is also available in a generic version that's not targeted toward any specific type of entity as well as an edition that's skewed towards nonprofits). From the launch menu, it's not particularly intuitive that the system has POS capabilities but they're there. To see these, you just need to click the "Sales Order" icon in the ribbon bar and you'll be presented with a list of available options. In addition to POS, there are selections for Order Entry, Reports, and several additional choices. When you click on POS, you'll be presented with a process menu that shows the task progression through various aspects of the POS process. You'll also see Denali's left-hand side pane that offers extended task selections such as adding registers, balancing individual registers, and printing sales and sales tax reports.

Solid Inventory Management, But Not for Everyone

Inventory is one of Cougar Mountain Denali Summit's stronger points. The Inventory module is part of the Denali Summit bundle, which, as stated above, also includes the Controller, General Ledger, AP and Receivable, Sales and PO entry, and Bank Reconciliation.

For the most part, I found CMS' Inventory easy to navigate and use. Choosing an application module is performed by an icon bar across the top of the screen, which brings up both an Explorer-type menu pane at the left of the screen and a process flow chart that leads you step-by-step through various transactions. That can be a big plus if you have unsophisticated users performing operations. There's also a top ribbon bar that changes with the application module chosen and more or less mirrors the choices in the Explorer view, so it's easy to get where you want to be.

As inventories go, Denali's is only a bit more than basic. It includes bar code support and kitting, for example. It also handles item serialization as well as multiple warehouses and currencies. Transiting inventory between warehouses isn't difficult, but not quite as easy as with Acumatica, which has a wizard to do this. It's does most of the common costing methods, including First-In First-Out (FIFO), Weighted Average, Standard Cost, and Last-In First-Out (LIFO) even though that one's not as popular as it used to be. While it doesn't offer Specific Item costing that won't be a problem in most cases.

Inventory reporting is adequate, with reports moderately easy to generate, but are somewhat vanilla in appearance. Graphs are easy to read but are somewhat sparse, much like the out-of-the-box reporting of Zoho Inventory. Generating reports also isn't intuitive enough so, occasionally, even the online Help wasn't enough to help me with the confusing input screens. However, there's a 170-page User Manual available online for download, which helped a lot. I also found a number of demonstration and instructional videos on YouTube, though many of these are several years old.

SAP Crystal Reports is included with several bundles including this one, and a $495 option with some of the less expensive bundle offerings. Again, much like Zoho integrating its Zoho Reports engine with Zoho Inventory, adding Crystal Reports to CMS makes it easier to generate custom and ad hoc reports. If you don't have someone on staff that knows or is willing to learn Crystal Reports, it's easy to find a consultant who does and can help out with customizing reports to your specific needs.

Good for Smaller Organizations with Generic Needs

Overall, CMS is very upfront about what Cougar Mountain Denali Summit is and what it isn't. The company doesn't bill itself as ERP; though, after reviewing it, we can state that it'll work well as basic ERP for some organizations (particularly retail). While it's more of what used to be called "middleware" than true ERP, for smaller enterprises that can get by with a basic solution, Cougar Mountain Denali Summit and its available add-ons are an effective, economical way to go.

Cougar Mountain Denali Summit's Inventory Management module is geared towards a generic user, or with the purchase of the POS module, to a retailer. It's not particularly strong or applicable to a manufacturing or distribution entity, though the module that CMS labels as Job Cost provides time and expense and work-in-progress reporting. This might be beneficial to some smaller manufacturers who don't require extensive shop floor or MRP capabilities. CMS also offers a Fund Accounting variant for non-profit organizations, and they may find Cougar Mountain Denali Summit's inventory very much in line if they have a retail or mail-order revenue operation.

Finally, Cougar Mountain Denali Summit makes an attractive small enterprise accounting solution, mainly because it offers a variety of on-premises or hosted options along with flexible pricing schemes, available as a flat fee or as pay-as-you-go. That provides customers with a great deal of cost flexibility while retaining the ability to build a more custom and complex system in stages.

Cougar Mountain Denali Summit

Bottom Line: Cougar Mountain Denali Summit is a user-friendly system that offers a wide variety of modules and options. While a little generic in terms of capabilities it should meet the needs of many SMBs that don't require advanced capabilities.

Ted Needleman has been covering the world of technology for almost 40 years. He writes frequently on software, hardware, and technology-related subjects. He has been a programmer, accountant, Editor-in-Chief of Accounting Technology magazine, and the director of an imaging and printing test lab. He has been performing reviews for PCMag since the 1990s.
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